Category: Twenties

The ultimate aim of Reality Attunement Therapy is the reduction or elimination of obstacles that disrupt one’s felt moment-to-moment experience as it unfolds. These obstacles often result from early childhood experiences with one’s primary caretaker(s). These obstacles may become increasingly complex and entrenched depending on the extent to which our ideas of “happiness” come to depend on the successful manipulation of external experience.

“Ideal” childhood development would do little more than instill a felt sense that the world is a safe place for exploration and experiential learning. To the extent that this ideal is realized, natural human curiosity will seek out growth-enhancing experiential opportunities.

Many – if not most – of us, however, enter early adulthood with largely subconscious, thought-driven notions of external conditions that must manifest in order for one to “be happy.” These notions often relate to a need for parental approval, career success, social status, material acquisition, etc. To the extent that this becomes the case, it is not long into our twenties that we begin to feel some nagging sense of ennui – a persistent sense that things are seldom as they “should be.” This malaise results from the fact that external conditions that we thought would lead to “happiness” are inherently unreliable and unsatisfactory.

At this point we may begin experimenting with certain life variables, seeking through trial and error to realize that right formula as an antidote to this malaise. We may experiment with drugs or alcohol, change partners, change jobs, change geographical locations, etc. Each of these changes, however, include important “transactional costs” in the form of mounting losses and disappointments.

At some point, if we are fortunate, we realize on some level that what needs realignment is not our external circumstances, but rather the fundamental ways in which we relate to these circumstances.

Reality Attunement Therapy is uniquely geared toward facilitating this vital realignment in early adulthood. The therapeutic work is aimed at heightening awareness of the thought-driven notions that have shaped one’s misguided notions of happiness through one’s formative years. In becoming increasingly aware of this conditioning, one is positioned to question the validity and utility of many of one’s most basic orientations to life within a supportive, open environment. Perhaps for the first time one becomes able to realize freedom that results from direct connection to experience as it unfolds.

To learn more about how Reality Attunement Therapy can assist in successfully navigating early adulthood, contact psychotherapist Mike Lubofsky at (415) 508-6263 or visit www.lexthera.com.